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Sky and Setanta announced their fixtures for the first 15 ‘match days’  in the 2008 Premier League calendar (here is a Premier League TV Guide for US television).  What often goes unnoticed by football fans is the power that the television companies have over which clubs their money goes to.

The Premier League clubs decide how to split the money received from television, and due to bullying by the big-4  in their wisom award 25% of the money according to how many times a club is shown on TV.  For the current TV deal, that works out to £460,000 per appearance (with a minimum payment of £4.6million per year).

The fixtures announced today break down as follows:

9 appearances: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United

7 appearances: Manchester City, Newcastle, Spurs

6 appearances: Everton

5 appearances: Aston Villa, West Ham

4 appearances: Sunderland, Bolton, West Brom, Blackburn

3 appearances: Fulham, Wigan, Portsmouth, Stoke, Middlesbrough

2 appearances: Hull

The usual suspects are at the top of course, but it’s also interesting to see the ‘big clubs’ like Newcastle and Spurs getting a lot of games despite disappointing campaigns last year.  The ’small clubs’ like Blackburn and Portsmouth are getting relatively few games despite finishing higher up the league table.

This translates into cold hard cash as follows: If the discrepancy remains over the course of the season, Newcastle will receive over £3.5million more than Portsmouth - at the discretion of Sky/Setana - even though Portsmouth finished 4 places higher last year.

Putting this in real terms, it’s enough to pay two players £35k per week, or it’s like having an extra 7,500 fans at every home game.

SoccerShout posted some more examples of unfair TV money distribution last season.  For example, Newcastle getting £5million more than Middlesbrough, despite finishing only once place higher.

Let me be clear on one thing:  I don’t blame the TV companies for wanting to show more of the big-4, and even teams like Spurs and Newcastle, if that will draw the most viewers.  It’s their prerogative to optimize their offering.

I do have a problem with the Premier League distributing that money according to appearances, which effectively lets the TV companies decide which clubs get the most money.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of days, so forgive me if I sound like I’m trying to be smart after the event.  I had a thought at the weekend that makes this whole mess even odder, and I also got an email back from the Premier League.

Quick recap: Thanks to Setanta, Chelsea find themselves playing on both Monday and Thursday night this week.  The Monday game is pushed back from the past weekend, and the Thursday game has been brought forward from next week (with less than 20 days notice).  It’s patently unfair on Chelsea to make them play two games so close together at this late stage of the season - sacrificing sporting balance at the behest of the TV monster.

I noticed a couple of things at the weekend.  First of all, there was no lunchtime kick-off on Saturday.  This is the Setanta timeslot.  Presumably the Chelsea v Wigan game could have been played then and the furore about the Thursday game would have been pretty much non-existent.

The second thing: who the hell actually wants to watch Chelsea v Wigan?  I was genuinely going to predict this was going to be a thoroughly dull 1-0 or 2-0 to Chelsea.  Yes, there was a twist at the end of the game that might have been a fatal wound to Chelsea’s title ambitions, but I don’t think that made up for the preceding 92-minute monotony.  Personally, I would have preferred a relegation-related fixture like Reading v Fulham or Bolton v West Ham.  If this would have drawn a lower audience than the Chelsea game, then shame on us football fans.

I actually wrote to the Premier League to ask them why the Everton v Chelsea fixture had been re-arranged.  I felt like I was being pretty explicit with the question:

My main point of interest is: why re-arrange the fixture at all?

The Premier League statement quoted in the press cited “enormous pressure from international match and European competition dates, as well as the need to balance the important requirements of the police and our broadcasters”.

But there was no pressure on the original weekend date for the fixture.  There are dozens of midweek games that go untelevised throughout the season, so if there’s a quota to be filled there are surely plenty of other candidates.

So why re-arrange a fixture that, as far as I can tell, didn’t need to be re-arranged?

The reply came back after six days:

Thank you for your email concerning the Everton v Chelsea fixture. We appreciate the inconvenience caused when fixtures change at late notice, and we apologise for any problems this has caused for you.

Fixture planning is a complex process and we always try to give at least 4 weeks notice when fixtures move. Premier League fixtures can only be fixed once dates for other competitions have been set, e.g. the UEFA Cup, FA Cup and Champions League, and this can make it difficult to find slots for some games. In addition to this, as you may be aware, the European Commission determined that we must provide 138 matches for live TV coverage; this further limits our ability to schedule fixtures as and when we would want during the season. Also we are committed to ensuring that the ‘closed window’ is preserved - that is, that games are not shown live on television at 3pm on a Saturday - to protect attendances and participation at all levels of the game. Another reason fixtures cannot always be scheduled is to do with the willingness or ability of the police service to cover a certain time. Unfortunately this means some matches have to be moved at late notice through a combination of the factors outlined above and in order for us to meet the requirements of our TV contracts.

Attached is our fixture fact list for your information.

So nice of them to reply, but just one problem - which I put to them in a reply:

I don’t feel it addressed my main question though: Why re-arrange this specific fixture?

No reply in the past 11 days, so I suppose we’ll just have to go with the “what’s more likely” method.  The Police insisted on the change to a prime-time slot?  The European Commission insisted on the change to a prime-time slot?  Or Setanta?

Tricky…tricky…

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All too often, football fans get treated like they are brain dead morons who lack any ability for critical thought. Managers think you’ll be content to listen to the deserved-a-result and ref-done-us-wrong spiel in the post-match interview. Television companies think you’re motivated by terms like Super-Grandslam Sunday, as if you couldn’t figure out on your own that the top-4 playing each other on the same day wouldn’t be worth watching.

I also find the level of analysis and tactical insight to be sorely lacking in television and newspapers. The co-commentator is too often limited to say-what-you-see analysis during the replays: “Well, the winger crossed the ball in…and the striker jumps above everyone else…gets his head to the ball…and it’s in the back of the net”. Yeah, thanks for that.

I want to like the Telegraph’s new Champions League 3D feature that turned up on their website for this week’s Champions League games involving Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. It’s really nice technology: Graphics like you’ll find in the FIFA-style games that accurately represent the players actions during the goals; the play is marked-up to highlight the runs of players; virtual camera angles that would physically impossible to capture on the pitch.

But the commentary that goes with it reverts to the state-the-bloody-obvious style that we find on TV. The Arsenal highlights start out well by highlighting Adebeyor’s neat run from the goal line to the edge of the six-yard box - I didn’t spot that on ESPN. It’s all downhill from there though - just have a listen and you’ll probably feel that a child could have come up with something more original.

Well done to the Telegraph for trying something new. They’ve done the hard part in putting the 3D replays together - they just need to find an intelligent footballer to narrate it.

Alright, so maybe they haven’t done the hard part.